DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
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but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Friday, December 6, 2013

Comprehensively Yours

Some years back, I was having a discussion with several of my liberal friends, who asked what my objection to their ideology was. My answer was simple: because liberalism (or “progressivism,” as they now prefer), when taken to its nth degree, must and does end in fascism. In order to achieve the liberal paradise, and since the common folk cannot be trusted, coercion must be part of the solution; the generation that screamed “off the pigs” now controls most of the levers of the federal government, and have become the pigs themselves.

Consder the mantra: “comprehensive.” Immigration reform, healthcare reform, campaign-finance reform, whatever. In the guise of “reforming” a system that may or may not even be broken (but, since nothing works perfectly, everything is “broken” to one degree or another), the Left insists upon a mandated straitjacket, into which they can cram all their pet policies, nostrums and phobias in the hopes of finally slaying whatever bugbear keeps them awake at night. And that bugbear, when you examine it closely enough, is Freedom.

Why the Left — which devotes a great deal of time and energy to the promotion of sybaritic pursuits, especially sexual license without consequences — should fear freedom so much is not at first obvious. After all, they’re the ones who claim to want the government “out of the bedroom” — and yet they’ve put it there, right at the moment of conception, in the Patient Deflection and Unaffordable Care Act. They’re the ones who have used the First Amendment as a shield — and quite correctly, too — against government censorship for decades, and yet now they can think of all sort exceptions to it. The Second Amendment makes them profoundly uncomfortable, since they find it inconceivable that an armed private citizen’s first instinct is not to shoot up a school or a shopping mall but to defend himself and his loved ones, and they have a touching, almost childlike faith in the ability of the “pigs” they once denigrated to come to their own personal rescue in times of trouble.

They won’t, of course, but that’s a personal problem — when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away. The institutional problem is, for the Left, no problem at all. With the reins of power in their hands since David Axelrod, the Jake Lingle of his day, gave the country the unasked-for and unwanted Trojan Horse of Barack Obama, they’ve discovered the joys of executive action, and of civilian control of the military and the police. When Obama promised “fundamental transformation” just five days before the 2008 election, he meant it. And who’s going to gainsay him?

Now, five years later, we’re getting a pretty good idea of what that “fundamental transformation” entails: the remaking of the U.S. into a nation of billionaires and beggars, of “public servants” and supplicants, of an imperial capital in the reign of the Emperor Hussein and a threadbare, exploited heartland, which exists at the sufferance of its betters on the coasts. All utterly predictable, if you understood back in 2008 who Obama was and whom he represented.

But don’t worry: the worst is yet to come. As I warned repeatedly during the disgraceful, sham Romney campaign, the election of 2012 was Obama’s last hurdle before the real “fundamental transformation” could begin. The first term was largely devoted to hammering through Obamacare and then prodding, poking, pushing, testing the limits of what a realImperial Presidency might look like once electoral constraints were removed. And now we know.

REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA): Professor Turley, the constitution, the system of separated powers is not simply about stopping one branch of government from usurping another. It’s about protecting the liberty of Americans from the dangers of concentrated government power. How does the president’s unilateral modification of act of Congress affect both the balance of power between the political branches and the liberty interests of the American people?

JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power in a single branch.

Now that’s what I call “comprehensive” governmental reform.

The only check left on Obama is impeachment – something the GOP has scrupulously avoided discussing until recently. From Jonathan Strong’s piece on the subject over at NRO:

With that first mention of the “i word,” leaks began springing from the dam that had been holding back the House GOP lawmakers united by frustration with President Obama’s executive abuses. Republicans have been watching impotently as Obama has walked all over the law, with increasing brazenness the further he gets into his tenure. His first term included major clashes over Congress’s subpoena power and, months before the election, the president’s imposition of the “DREAM Act” by fiat — something he had publicly said before was beyond his legal authority.

Almost a year into Obama’s second term, his unilateral delays of Obamacare and other legally questionable actions are now routine. He even threatened to veto a bill that would have ratified something he had done on his own without any clear authority, the delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate.

And why should they? Comprehensively speaking, they’re holding all the cards, including the recent abolition of the filibuster in the Senate for most presidential nominees. Naturally, the Left cheers for more:

Winston Churchill famously remarked that democracy is the worst form of government… except for all the other forms. He was right. Democracy is unbelievably messy, convoluted, and sometimes maddening. But despite these drawbacks, it does not have to be dysfunctional or impossible. In fact, the whole idea of democracy is government by the people, of the people, and for the people, so why is it that anything but the votes of the people are allowed to decide political measures?

Yet that is precisely what the filibuster does. Unlike a simple nay vote on a measure that a Senator disagrees with, it is an insidious mechanism to prevent a vote on the measure in the first place, with the goal of killing it by running out the clock.

That bears repeating. It prevents a vote on a measure, which is essentially the same as a trial attorney refusing to let a jury deliver a verdict through a never-ending closing argument. If that sounds ridiculous, it is. What makes it even worse is that the filibuster does not need to involve actual debate on the measure but can be accomplished by almost any tactic that plays for time, including objecting to the preliminary motion to proceed to the measure.

Given all this, would it not make sense to abolish the filibuster entirely? It would, but that point seems to be lost on both political parties.

There’s been a good deal of head-scratching on the Right regarding the “nuclear option,” which Harry Reid — probably the most corrupt man in American politics — recently exercised. (The GOP had its chance, remember, but it was thwarted by our old friend John McCain and his Gang of 14 back in 2005.) Why, the thinking goes, did Reid pull the trigger on a naked power grab when he must know that it will come back to bite him and his party on the rear end when the GOP retakes the Senate? The thought never seems to occur to them that Reid & Co. have no intention of ever being in the minority again.

“This is our moment,” said Obama upon securing the Democratic nomination in 2008. “This is our time.” It’s a phrase and a sentiment he repeated throughout the campaign, including in the commercial below. The Old Guard interpreted that as a transient statement of victory in the political struggle with Hillary Clinton. Those of us who came of age in the 1960s heard it as something else entirely: the fulfillment of a century-old dream.

You’re Too Old for MRI under Obama Care

It is not easy to find a doctor who takes Medicare in our area. When we found one that did, mom accepted him, no questions asked, based on his sweet, smiling demeanor. I was not so easily convinced. Call me from the Show Me State if you’d like.

We arrived for our dual appointments - there was nobody in the waiting room so we waited just a few minutes before we were taken to the same examining room. The nurse came, very polite, took our information on her laptop and left, and we waited and waited. Finally, mom’s favorite smiling doctor showed up with his laptop in tow.

He told us his office was one hundred percent compliant with the ObamaCare electronic patient portals. We could not have cared less about his electronic compliance. Without touching her, he made mom walk back and forth to see what her right-leaning gait looked like. He determined that she needed a rolling walker because she probably had a mini stroke at some point when the gait commenced. He was not going to order an MRI because she is too old and ObamaCare will not approve payment.

He did not touch her on the previous visit either when she fell but had not broken anything; she was in severe pain and covered in ugly, deep bruises. He did not order any x-rays then because she did not seem to be in terrible pain, he said. Mom is stoic and put up a good front in the doctor’s office; she lingered in bed for three months, healing from the awful fall she took outside in the grass.

I complained of a terrible earache and a sinus infection. From three feet away, without touching me, he shined a flashlight into my throat, typed something into his laptop and told us that he will order our meds into the system which is connected directly to the pharmacy. We paid for the visit and drove to the nearest apothecary.

The prescriptions were not there just as I had feared. The doctor’s office had closed for the day and the pharmacist could not call to check where in cyberspace was the order trapped for meds that we both needed right away. On the positive side, at least the meds are available for now, rationing in pharmaceuticals has not begun yet.

Medical privacy, Cyber security

As all these computers communicate with each other through the various electronic portals, do not expect any medical privacy or cyber security of any kind. Your entire life’s history, health, meds, warts, skin lesions, bunions, surgeries, hospitalizations, Social Security numbers, income, addresses, smoking history, salt intake, soda drinking and fat-eating habits, sexual preferences, gun ownership, and biometric data are up for grabs for all to see and use. All your private medical history and information will be sent to a clearing house with or without your permission in January 2014. That’s worse than some medical transcriptionist overseas threatening to make everyone’s medical records public if she does not get a raise.

ObamaCare is not just very expensive insurance that most of us cannot and will not afford without drastic changes in lifestyle. It delivers lousy service, uncaring and poorly paid doctors, inadequate reimbursement, longer wait times, and selective rationing.

Second class medical care

For people 65 and older, doctors who will accept Medicare and Medicaid will be harder to find and specialists even harder. These patients will be forced into a second class medical care akin to what I’ve witnessed growing up under socialist nationalized health care.

When more and more people will be forced into Medicaid and Medicare, costs will escalate and so will taxes to support care for 30 million more patients who were previously without insurance.

Because there are no eligibility requirements in place, Illegal aliens and those seeking asylum with a certain religious bent will receive free care ahead of the line based on age, increasing wait time and reducing the amount of money available for the treatment of American citizens.

The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will have to cut costs by approving or disallowing medical services based on how expensive they are, the age of the patient, and utility to society. Rationing will become an important factor in the quality, quantity, and expedience of our medical care.

If IPAB denies treatment, there is no appeal because IPAB is only accountable to President Obama. The courts or Congress cannot override that decision. At least under private health care insurance, if you are denied treatment, you have an appeal process in place to defend your ability to have treatment paid by your insurance plan.

If Medicare denies medical care, the patient is not allowed to pay cash to a Medicare-contracted doctor, hospital, or other health provider. Under such circumstances, a patient can seek care from an independent doctor or hospitals, which are harder and harder to find, or look for treatment outside of the United States.

It is foreseeable that by 2015, most private plans will be gone, replaced by a single-payer IRS/HHS government-run insurance.

Young Americans Expect Obamacare to Be Repealed (Cruz vindicated!)

The young Americans the Obama administration so desperately needs to help make the Affordable Care Act function are the ones most likely to believe the law is endangered, suggesting that sustained House Republican efforts to repeal and undermine the law are bearing some fruit.
More than half of 18-to-29-year-olds who were surveyed in the most recent United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll say it is likely the law will be repealed in 2014, even though the chances of that actually occurring are remote.
According to the poll, 18 percent of respondents in this age group said it was "very likely" Obamacare would be repealed by Congress next year, while 33 percent said it was "somewhat likely" the law would be done away with. The survey has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
That has real-world implications. The administration has relentlessly wooed these so-called young invincibles—young, healthy Americans—to sign up to purchase health insurance through online exchanges. Those consumers, who tend to use health care services less frequently, are needed to subsidize the cost of treating older, sicker ones. Without their participation in large numbers (the target for next year is 40 percent of all new enrollees), premium rates for consumers in the exchanges could rise.
The ACA's advocates have derided the House GOP for voting to repeal the law more than 40 times, arguing that it's a waste of legislative time since the Democratic Senate won't consider such a bill. But the poll's results indicate that those attempts may have added to the widespread public confusion about the law's status. In addition, the relentlessly negative coverage of the act in the wake of the botched rollout of the federal HealthCare.gov exchange site may have contributed to the public's sense that the law is endangered.
The poll results also jibe with a survey released this week by the Harvard Institute of Politics which found that fewer than 30 percent of young Americans age 18-29 would or probably would sign up for health insurance and fewer than 40 percent of those surveyed approve of the law.
It also revealed widespread pessimism among African-Americans about the law's future. A staggering 70 percent of those surveyed (in all age groups) believe it is "somewhat likely" or "very likely" the law will be repealed next year.
The United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, surveyed 1,003 adults by landline and cell phone from Nov. 21-24.

Obama: Yes, Mandela has passed, but everything is a celebration of me.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder involves arrogant behavior, a lack of empathy for other people, and a need for admiration-all of which must be consistently evident at work and in relationships. People who are narcissistic are frequently described as cocky, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding. Narcissists may concentrate on unlikely personal outcomes (e.g., fame) and may be convinced that they deserve special treatment. Related Personality Disorders: Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic. Narcissism is a less extreme version of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Narcissism involves cockiness, manipulativeness, selfishness, power motives, and vanity-a love of mirrors.

Narcissists tend to have high self-esteem. However, narcissism is not the same thing as self-esteem; people who have high self-esteem are often humble, whereas narcissists rarely are. It was once thought that narcissists have high self-esteem on the surface, but deep down they are insecure. However, the latest evidence indicates that narcissists are actually secure or grandiose at both levels. Onlookers may infer that insecurity is there because narcissists tend to be defensive when their self-esteem is threatened (e.g., being ridiculed); narcissists can be aggressive. The sometimes dangerous lifestyle may more generally reflect sensation-seeking or impulsivity (e.g., risky sex, bold financial decisions).

Everything is celebration of me.
Upon the notice of the death of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama sent out a tweet:
A picture of himself. Mandela's passing is about how it affects Barack. This is nothing new. after Michael Phelps' achievements in the Olympics Obama sent this out:
Following Clint Eastwood's smackdown of Obama at the GOP Convention Obama sent this one out:
When Neil Armstrong passed last year, this is how Obama honors Armstrong:
When Will and Kate welcomed their new child? This is what went out:(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

Now You Can't Trust Anyone Over 60

A gift of days with the extended family stretching from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday inevitably invites reflection on the fields of folly where we find the rising generations at work and play. Youth, beautiful in its blossoming, arrives with predictable attitude, often illustrated by various piercings and tattoos. They're adolescents forever in search of a way to make the "meaningful" statement, as elusive as the maturity that lies ahead.
Babies, naturally, are exempt from criticism, gurgling and sucking their thumbs, blissfully unaware that the Brobdingnags around them are blowing their inheritance on big-government deficits. But as the seniors say, leaving on a cruise to the Caribbean, they made a deal with Social Security a long time ago, and they're not going to apologize now for living long enough to collect on the bet.
Between those who crawl and those who walk unsteadily, often with a cane, the sisters and the cousins and the aunts of the generations ranging from baby boomers to millennials come with a mixed bag of aspirations and motivations. The easiest target, because it's so big, are the 75 million boomers born after World War II. P.J. O'Rourke, one of the self-appointed, self-flagellating spokesmen for his cohort, concedes that his generation has a one-sided approach to all problems, whether economic, social or psychological. "We won't face them," he writes in The Wall Street Journal.
Why should they? There's a website for solutions, support groups for commiseration, exercise classes for pain and gain, alternative medicine that does no harm, and lots of celebrities famous mostly for being famous and who boast of surviving it all on gluten-free cupcakes, free-range chicken and gourmet kale.
"History is full of generations that had too many problems," Mr. O'Rourke continues. "We are the first generation to have too many answers."
Nevertheless, time marches on, as the World War II newsreels once portentously reminded us. Many of the babies of boomers are now boomerang children, returning to their old rooms at home after college, seeking subsidized health care "just like their grandparents." Only they want it before lumbago and arthritis, when they have to order new knees, hips or hearts. They rightly worry that the inefficient processing of Obamacare is proof of an inefficient program. Why shouldn't the digital delivery designers have the wizardry of those college dropouts named Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who smoothly expanded their networks online without having to offer humiliating apology after embarrassing excuse?
The generation that never trusted anyone over 30 has grown into the "age of accountability," and like it or not, they're the generation over 60 that can't be trusted, either. Hillary Clinton, the aging star in the crowded political firmament, can't even say what happened in Benghazi on her watch as secretary of state, when four Americans, including an American ambassador, were slain by terrorists. She couldn't have been more arrogant or irresponsible than the "best and brightest" who brought us the Vietnam War and whom the boomers held in such contempt for the petty bureaucratic and overweening political considerations that trumped common sense and human values. Her famous reply to a question from a Senate committee about Benghazi -- "What difference, at this point, does it make?" -- will define her from now on.
The generations born after the boomers were not so self-important and overconfident as their predecessors, who like all those who benefit from historical hindsight wanted a different kind of life. Those of Generation X, Y or Z did not bask in such huge numbers as to make them think they could remake the world in their own image.
The millennials have been described as selfish, self-absorbed and narcissistic, but scholars of the 20-somethings see them as a fluid and changing generation, particularly the younger ones troubled by unemployment and despair after the Great Recession of '08. Given their low-budget circumstances, they're less given to material values than to the search for "meaningful work." They prefer to see themselves more as "givers" than "takers."
But "meaningful" is reckoned by where you fit into the changing classifications of race, economic class, gender (or transgender). Among the latest definitions of "meaningful" is how you cultivate your organic garden. Raising tomatoes, radishes and broccoli in your backyard may feed your family, but it contributes nothing to the children who arrive at school hungry. Feeling virtuous, as popular in some quarters as that may be, isn't the same as acting virtuously.Every generation builds its life on how it perceives its best interests, though the choices people make won't necessarily serve them or others as well as they think. Alas, you could ask any boomer about that.

Obamacare 'perfect storm': Low enrollments, bad data

Another expert, Nancy Thompson of CBIZ Benefits & Insurance Services, said "no one had the crystal ball" that predicted just how dire the enrollment levels and data problems in enrollment files would be at this point, more than two months after Obamacare launched. "Let's face it, with the number of uninsured that we have in the United States, for us to be sitting [at less than 400,000 enrolled], that's staggeringly low," said Thompson, senior vice president and sales director at CBIZ.
"The bigger concern is, what kind of individuals are enrolling," Thompson said, echoing Tiede's concern about adverse selection. "The low enrollment numbers could absolutely play havoc on the rating structure."
Thompson noted that when they designed their plans and set premium prices for 2014 for the Obamacare exchanges, the exchanges had never enrolled anyone, so there was no data to use to predict who would enroll, and what their level of benefit use would look like.
Now, with low enrollment levels overall nationally, and with the assumption that a disproportionate number of people who did enroll were previously uninsurable because of pre-existing health conditions, "there's no doubt that some of [the insurers] missed the mark when they set rating structures," Thompson said.
An estimated 10 percent of all enrollments now being made on the federal Obamacare marketplace contain data errors that could delay people from actually getting health coverage, officials disclosed Friday.
And that error rate for enrollments submitted via HealthCare.gov and then sent to insurers before December was an estimated 25 percent, officials revealed.
The rate fell in the past week, officials said, because of repair efforts to HealthCare.gov's, particular the discovery and fix of one particular software problem that was causing an estimated 80 percent of data errors, officials said.

Ted Cruz Vindicated by Shaky Obamcare Rollout

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who lead the effort to shutdown the government to prevent Obamacare from being implemented, said that the troubles that have faced the new healthcare law since HealthCare.gov was unveiled have left him feeling vindicated.

"Boy, it's amazing how things can change in a few weeks in Congress," said Cruz while speaking at an event hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, Politico reported. "Just a few weeks ago, people in Washington were saying, 'Why on earth are you fighting so hard against Obamacare?' Now, nobody's saying that. Over and over again you run into people who say, 'Now I understand what this is all about.'"

The Texas Republican was criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for being willing to allow a portion of the government to close in order to stop Obamacare.

Cruz also talked about feeling vindicated by the troubled Obamacare rollout when he spoke at the Aspen Institute's Washington Ideas Forum in November, CNN Reported.

At that event he said that everyone who supported the shutdown effort is feeling "vindication."

"We've seen that those millions of Americans were right, and I wish Congress had listened to them before" Americans started receiving cancellation notices on their health insurance.

Most telling, he said, are Democrats who have changed their tune about Obamacare, who previously were unwilling to compromise, especially those who are expected to face tough elections in 2014.

"In the last few weeks over a dozen Democrats have publicly called for delaying Obamacare in significant respects," said the freshman senator from Texas.

The whole world, pretty much, is mourning for Nelson Mandela today.
But most are not mourning for the real Mandela. They are, in fact, mourning for the myth of Mandela.
But don’t believe me.
I’ve never been to South Africa – not during Apartheid and not after.
Instead, listen to Sonia Hruska. She was an early supporter of Mandela and worked in his administration.
“After about six years,” Hruska said, “I realized something serious is wrong; the communist elements are taking over, it’s not what we were promised.”
What did she see that the rest of the world missed?
“As a business owner, I can get 25 years in jail time if I do employ a white person, for instance,” she said. “It is totally ridiculous; you cannot have imagined that affirmative action could have gone so far.”
Today, in South Africa’s white population of 4 million, 1 million live in utter poverty.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Hruska describes routine, violent, racist atrocities of almost unimaginable proportions: Kidnap murders, home invasions, gang rapes.
“It’s heinous torture,” Hruska explained. “Even children as young as 2 months old get burned with hot water, get wrapped in newspaper and burned.”
In the case of one family, Hruska described a black mob breaking into a home, waiting for the white family to get home, then raping the mother in front of the father and son to see. Then, after killing the mother, they killed the father and son by plunging them into boiling water.
She said: “There is no easy way of saying exactly how these people are tortured. The standard would be a hot iron, electric iron, boiling water … and these are carried out for hours.”

Video: Obama Undermines Liberalism While Distancing Himself from Own Failures

A follow-up to Sarah's post about a key snippet from the president's interview with one of his most love-struck, panting media sycophants. This quote is solid gold:

"The challenge, I think, that we have going forward is not so much my personal management style or particular issues around White House organization. It actually has to do with what I referred to earlier which is we had these big agencies, some of which are outdated. Some of which are not designed properly.”

Point one: Hey, don't blame me. Point two: So, it turns out that the federal bureaucracy is actually pretty unwieldy and outmoded. The self-serving blame shift bit is classic Obama. Nothing's ever his fault -- hell, he often claims that he rarely even hears about bad news until it's plastered all over the media. But in his rush to stiff-arm the consequences for his own self-created, credibility-sapping mess, he (likely inadvertently) undermines the Left's entire worldview. They believe that big government can do big things well for the little people, and therefore more government is the path to better outcomes. That's the core of their governing philosophy. This acknowledgement by Obama transforms "Yes We Can!" into "well, maybe we can't -- but it's not my fault." Inspiring. I made this observation on Fox earlier today, and was pleasantly surprised that my Democratic counterpart didn't even attempt any predictable lefty spin. Kudos to Julie for shooting straight:

Guy Benson on Fox News - Obamacare mess part of broader problems.....
Before you go, be sure to read these two posts about the back-end problems still plaguing Healthcare.gov and the state exchanges. There's more pain to come -- all of which Barack Obama insists will not reflect one bit on Barack Obama's leadership or management skills. Which, ironically, is the defining flaw of his poor leadership and managerial skills.